


The bullets at the ghost house

by curtangel



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-24
Updated: 2007-10-24
Packaged: 2019-07-29 06:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16258442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtangel/pseuds/curtangel
Summary: A childhood memoryOriginally posted on thisisby.us - recaptured through the Wayback Machine 10/10/18Minor changes for legibility and to obscure some names.





	The bullets at the ghost house

The way we always went to the ghost house was walled with honeysuckles we would pick and slurp.  There was small forest of trees obscuring our view of the street... going there  was entering a time warp.  The ghost house was four stories tall, and watched over the neighborhood of cheap rental houses with its blank stare.

It was next to my best friend's house. We always considered the ghost house with some trepidation even though we played there whenever we could.  Sometimes we'd swear to each other, "Someone up there is watching us."  I know saw a white figure looking down on me and then it would be gone.  But no one lived there.  At least, if anyone was there, what they did was far from living. We'd peek in through the windows only to see a mass of boxes.  The grass was overgrown and someone had tossed out rubble and old appliances straight into the backyard. 

I often wondered who let this once beautiful house go to seed as we passed over the gravel driveway and the separated garage.  An old stove (the neighborhood children's communal hiding place) marked the edge of what we considered the yard.  Every time we played there we'd open the oven door and sometimes there would be something in there.  Once we found a Playboy -- the girls had too much makeup and over-teased curly hair.    Most of them wore lingerie of some sort, and I found it odd -- but  I was fascinated by the gauze and soft lighting the permeated everything.  I decided Playboy world was beautiful, though confusing --  I didn't understand why a girl in one picture was tearing away her underwear - we decided it must be because she was Sexy.  I wanted to look at it some more, but the boys it belonged to took it and never left it there again.

The crown jewel of the area was an old clubhouse made of discarded pieces of aged wood in the odd neutral space between fences.  We never questioned where it came from, it seemed perfectly natural it was left there for our use.   It was our hidden spot, away from the eyes of the ghost house, away from parents, away even from the potential distractions of toys and video games... where we could talk and imagine.

One of my strangest memories of the house is from when I was there by myself.  My friend wasn't home, so I decided to  use the opportunity examine the house more closely.  I walked its perimeter, peeking in through windows -- even bravely trying the back door. 

I found the bullets on the far side of the house... the side we never played on.  There were almost 10 of them, they looked like the kind of bolt you'd use in rifles.  I took them.  I imagined some robber leaving the bullets there, maybe planning some kind of heist.  I couldn't leave the bullets there.  Maybe they were intended for my friend or her family.  Maybe they belonged to the Mafia.

If my friend had been home I probably would have asked her parents what to do.  I didn't want to ask my own mom; I might get in trouble for being out so far on my own, or maybe she'd call the police and they wouldn't believe I just found them.  I took them as far from the house as I could -- I took them to my school.

I wanted to get rid of them and it had the only public trash bin I knew of.   However, the bin had been recently emptied, and I had been told bullets explode if you hit them too hard.  I imagined throwing them into the bin and running away as it exploded into orange fire like in the movies.  I decided not to, since I was a slow runner and if the trash bin exploded I might have to explain things.  I walked closer to the school and considered my usual hiding places at the playground, finally settling on the spot in between the large air conditioning unit and the wall.  I set the bullets on top of the unit and ran.  The next day I went to school they were gone.

We eventually had to stop playing at the ghost house.  A group of people in business suits told us we couldn't play there anymore because kids had thrown rocks at some of the windows and they didn't want to think it was us.  A decisive and legal looking "No Trespassing" sign went up and we found other places to play.

Except when we wanted honeysuckles or were playing hide and seek in the trees. It wasn't trespassing because we were too far from the house to throw rocks at the dead windows.


End file.
